Page 35 - Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century

Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11338.html

18 EDUCATING THE ENGINEER OF 2020

• engagement of the engineer and professionals from different
disciplines in team-based problem-solving processes;
• the tools used by the engineer and other technical
professionals;
• interaction of the engineer with the customer and engineering
managers to set agreed-upon goals; and
• the economic, political, ethical, and social constraints as bound-
ary conditions that define the possible range of solutions for
engineering problems and demand the interaction of engineers
with the public.

Similarly, one must consider the several elements of the engineering
education system, to include:

• the teaching, learning, and assessment processes that move a
student from one state of knowledge and professional prepara-
tion to another state;
• students and teachers/faculty as the primary actors within the
learning process;
• curricula, laboratories, instructional technologies, and other
tools for teaching and learning;
• the goals and objectives of teachers/faculty, departments,
colleges, accreditors, employers, and other stakeholders of en-
gineering education;
• the external environment that shapes the overall demand for
engineering education (e.g., the business cycle and technologi-
cal progress); and
• a process for revising goals and objectives as technological ad-
vances and other changes occur.

Our goal is to reengineer engineering education. This reengineering
focuses not on the enterprise’s organization, but on its products and
services—in the present case, what higher education would define as its
outcomes. Reengineering involves asking the questions: How can we
make our processes more effective, more quality conscious, more flex-
ible, simpler, and less expensive? It begins by identifying the desired
outcome, product, or service, and then designing backward, using as
design criteria what the outcome is supposed to look like and the nature
of the processes used to produce it. Quality is measured in terms of both

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